Caighlan Smith

Caighlan Smith builds speculative stories around young people negotiating strange environments and constrained choices. The Weather follows Lolly, a girl growing up in an isolated wasteland town where fierce storms govern daily routines. School, work, and caring for her grandmother define the future planned for her, while curiosity draws her toward questions about the world beyond town. Released in 2016 as a Tor.com Original, the short science-fiction story makes its damaged landscape inseparable from Lolly’s sense of responsibility and possibility. Smith began the Surreality sequence in her teens and later studied English, Classics, and creative writing at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her fiction often places recognizable adolescent uncertainty inside unsettling fantasy or futuristic settings. The Weather compresses that interest into one close perspective: danger comes from the climate, but the harder choice concerns home, loyalty, and whether imagining another life can become the first step toward reaching it.